Part 28 (1/2)
Her long dark skirts were sweeping the autumn gra.s.s at sunset as she paced back and forth under the red-gold tents of the maples. It was a row of young trees she had planted to grace a certain turf walk at the top of the low wall that divided, by a drop of a few feet, the west lawn at Stone Ridge from the meadow where the beautiful Alderneys were pastured. The maples turned purple as the light faded out of their tops and struck flat across the meadow, making the gra.s.s vivid as in spring.
Two spots of color moved across it slowly--a young woman capped and ap.r.o.ned, urging along a little trotting child. Down the path of their united shadows they came, and the shadows had reached already the dividing wall. The waiting smile was sweet upon the grandmother's features; her face was transformed like the meadow into a memory of spring. The child saw her, and waved to her with something scarlet which he held in his free hand. She admired the stride of his brown legs above their crumpled socks, the imperishable look of health on his broad, sweet glowing face. She lifted him high in her embrace and bore him up the hill, his dusty shoes dangling against her silk front breadths, his knees pressed tight against her waist, and over her shoulder he flourished the scarlet cardinal flower.
”Where have you been with him so long?” she asked the nursemaid.
”Only up in the lane, as far as the three gates, ma'am.”
”Then where did he get this flower?”
”Oh,” said the pretty Irish girl, half scared by her tone, and tempted to prevaricate. ”Why--he must have picked it, I guess.”
”Not in the lane. It's a swamp-flower. It doesn't grow anywhere within four miles of the lane!”
”It must have been the old man gev it him then,” said the maid. ”Is it unhealthy, ma'am? I tried to get it from him, but he screamed and fussed so.”
”What old man do you mean?”
”Why, him that was pa.s.sin' up the lane. I didn't see him till he was clean by--and Middy had the flower. I don't know where in the world he could have got it, else, for we wasn't one step out of the lane, was we, Middy! That's the very truth.”
”But where were you when strangers were giving him flowers?”
”Why, sure, ma'am, I was only just a step away be the fence, having a word with one o' the boys. I was lookin' in the field, speakin' to him and he was lookin' at me with me back to the lane. 'There's the old man again,' he says, s.h.i.+ftin' his eye. I turned me round and there, so he was, but he was by and walkin' on up the lane. And Middy had the flower.
He wouldn't be parted from it and squeezed it so tight I thought the juice might be bad on his hands, and he promised he'd not put it to his mouth. I kep' my eye on him. Ah, the nasty, na-asty flower! Give it here to Katy till I throw it!”
”There's no harm in the flower. But there is harm in strangers making up to him when your back is turned. Don't you know the dreadful things we read in the papers?”
Mrs. Bogardus said no more. It was Middy's supper-time. But later she questioned Katy particularly concerning this old man who was spoken of quite as if his appearance were taken for granted in the heart of the farm. Katy recalled one other day when she had seen him asleep as she thought in a corner of the fence by the big chestnut tree when she and the boy were nutting. They had moved away to the other side of the tree, but while she was busy hunting for nuts Middy had strayed off a bit and foregathered with the old man, who was not asleep at all, but stood with his back to her pouring a handful of big fat chestnuts into the child's little skirt, which he held up. She called to him and the old man had stepped back, and the nuts were spilled. Middy had cried and made her pick them up, and when that was done the stranger was gone quite out of sight.
Chauncey, too, was questioned, and testified that the old man of the fields was no myth. But he deprecated all this exaggerated alarm. The stranger was some simple-minded old work-house candidate putting off the evil day. In a few weeks he would have to make for shelter in one of the neighboring towns. Chauncey could not see what legal hold they had upon him even if they could catch him. He hardly came under the vagrancy law, since he had neither begged, nor helped himself appreciably to the means of subsistence.
”That is just the point,” Mrs. Bogardus insisted. ”He has the means--from somewhere--to lurk around here and make friends with that child. There may be a gang of kidnappers behind him. He is the harmless looking decoy. I insist that you keep a sharp lookout, Chauncey. There shall be a hold upon him, law or no law, if we catch him on our ground.”
A cold rain set in. Paul and Moya wrote of delays in the house preparations, and hoped the grandmother was not growing tired of her charge. On the last of the rainy days, in a burst of dubious suns.h.i.+ne, came a young girl on horseback to have tea with Mrs. Bogardus. She was one of that lady's discoverers, so she claimed, Miss Sallie Remsen, very pretty and full of fantastic little affectations founded on her intense appreciation of the picturesque. She called Mrs. Bogardus ”Madam,” and likened her to various female personages in history more celebrated for strength of purpose than for the Christian virtues. Mrs. Bogardus, in her restful ignorance of such futilities, went no deeper into these allusions than their intention, which she took to be complimentary. Miss Sallie hugged herself with joy when the rain came down in torrents for a clear-up shower. Her groom was sent home with a note to inform her mother that Mrs. Bogardus wished to keep her overnight. All the mothers were flattered when Mrs. Bogardus took notice of their daughters,--even much grander dames than she herself could pretend to be.
They had a charming little dinner by themselves to the tune of the rain outside, and were having their coffee by the drawing-room fire; and Miss Sallie was thinking by what phrase one could do justice to the ma.s.sive, cra.s.s ugliness of that self-satisfied apartment, furnished in the hideous sixties, when the word was sent in that Mrs. Dunlop wished to speak with Mrs. Bogardus. Something of Cerissa's injured importance survived the transmission of the message, causing Mrs. Bogardus to smile to herself as she rose. Cerissa was waiting in the dining-room. She kept her seat as Mrs. Bogardus entered. Her eyes did not rise higher than the lady's dress, which she examined with a fierce intentness of comparison while she opened her errand.
”I thought you'd like to know you've got a strange lodger down to the old house. I don't seem to ever get moved!” she enlarged. ”I'm always runnin' down there after first one thing 'n' another we've forgot. This morning 't was my stone batter-pot. Chauncey said he thought it was getting cold enough for buckwheat cakes. I don't suppose you want to have stray tramps in there in the old house, building fires in the loom-room, where, if a spark got loose, it would blaze up them draughty stairs, and the whole house would go in a minute.” Cerissa stopped to gain breath.
”Making fires? Are you sure of that? Has any smoke been seen coming out of that chimney?”
”Why, it's been raining so! And the trees have got so tall! But I could show you the shucks an' sh.e.l.ls he's left there. I know how we left it!”
”You had better speak--No; I will see Chauncey in the morning.” Mrs.
Bogardus never, if she could avoid it, gave an order through a third person.
”Well, I thought I'd just step in. Chauncey said 't was no use disturbing you to-night, but he's just that way--so easy about everything! I thought you wouldn't want to be harboring tramps this wet weather when most anybody would be tempted to build a fire. I'm more concerned about what goes on down there now we're _out_ of the house! I seem to have it on my mind the whole time. A house is just like a child: the more you don't see it the more you worry about it.”
”I'm glad you have such a home feeling about the place,” said Mrs.
Bogardus, avoiding the onset of words. ”Well, good-evening, Cerissa.
Thank you for your trouble. I will see about it in the morning.”
Mrs. Bogardus mentioned what she had just heard to Miss Sallie, who remarked, with her keen sense of ant.i.thesis, what a contrast _that_ fireside must be to _this_.